


professionalism is relative, really

by occasionally_always



Series: polyamchives fluff <3 [2]
Category: The Magnus Archives (Podcast)
Genre: Fluff and Humor, same universe as the previous work but readable on its own, this one is seriously close to getting a "tma is a workplace comedy" tag
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-11-28
Updated: 2020-11-28
Packaged: 2021-03-09 23:34:46
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,726
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27754678
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/occasionally_always/pseuds/occasionally_always
Summary: With the three of them around her, she’s filled with such a sense of warmth and safety that it feels like nothing in the world will ever be more of a home to her than wherever they are.Even if “where they are” is currently an empty breakroom-turned-hiding-place due to extremely childish reasons.
Relationships: Martin Blackwood & Sasha James & Jonathan "Jon" Sims | The Archivist & Tim Stoker, Martin Blackwood/Sasha James/Jonathan "Jon" Sims | The Archivist/Tim Stoker
Series: polyamchives fluff <3 [2]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1984142
Comments: 4
Kudos: 60





	professionalism is relative, really

**Author's Note:**

> hhhhhh i love writing them so much (and yes it took me forever to write this but...shhh). welcome back to another saga of "what cursed items from the time of gertrude's previous assistants did they carelessly scavenge from the breakroom this time," because that's really what we're all here for, isn't it? it's what I'M here for, anyway.  
> elias makes a brief and slightly evil appearance in this one, as he is prone to do, but i swear nothing bad is going to happen to these four. this series (which i really do want to update more often) is safe from angst i promise. anyway have i mentioned i love them??  
> also, i'm going off a really vague mental image of the layout of the archives that's probably not canon at all, so hopefully it makes sense.

“Power’s out!” calls Martin, from deep within the archives.

“Wow, really?” Sasha yells back sarcastically, with a bite to her tone that wouldn’t be there if not for her sheer frustration at the fact that this is the third time this week the lights have gone out. She sets down her box of statements with a sigh and, hand trailing along a shelf to guide her, makes her way to where Martin’s voice had come from.

“Sorry,” he says sheepishly, sounding a lot closer now, and she stops abruptly so that she doesn’t run into him. “I—sorry.”

“No, I’m sorry for snapping,” Sasha admits. “Hold out your hand, let’s get out of here.” She reaches in front of her until her hand finds his, and they take a few nervous, halting steps in the direction of the door to their offices. There aren’t any windows in the archive room, so it’s pitch-black, and Sasha really doesn’t trust her spatial awareness skills to get her through this.

Then a couple meters away, she hears a door swing open, and a torch shines in their faces. It’s bright enough that it hurts her eyes, and she futilely tries to wave the light away with a hand. “Eugh, Tim!”

The light obligingly points down at the ground instead of their eyes, and then up again until it’s underneath Tim’s chin and illuminating his face. Martin lets out a little shriek, and Sasha marches forward to tug the torch from Tim’s grip. “I’m gonna lock you in here, Stoker.”

“Don’t leave me, I beg of you!” He follows her out of the archive with Martin in tow. It’s just as dark in their office space, and she shines the torch around with a sigh as he says, “Do you think Gertrude will finally let us take this to Bouchard?”

“I sure hope so,” mutters Martin. “I hate it when this happens. Let’s get out of here, maybe?”

“Yeah, I think…” Tim’s voice trails off, and Sasha swings the torch around to look at him. He flinches at the sudden light but doesn’t say anything, just stares over her shoulder, and this freaks her out immensely. She whirls around, but nothing’s there; this is when her ears pick up the sound of faint humming, as though from far away. It’s in a minor key, and sends chills down her spine.

“Guys…” whispers Martin. “Where is that coming from?”

Sasha can’t tell. It’s so quiet that the direction is impossible to place, and she would have thought she was imagining it if not for Martin and Tim’s reactions. “You don’t think it’s coming from where we just were, do you?”

The three of them turn simultaneously to the archive they had left, facing the door that leads into the room holding the shelves and shelves of filed statements. Sasha’s light isn’t very big, only illuminating the part of the room directly through the doorway, so she can’t see if there’s someone or some _thing_ further inside, but she’s not about to go in there and find out.

The humming’s getting louder now, and they huddle closer together. Sasha’s not ashamed to admit she’s frightened; she’s read the statements enough to know the kind of horror stories that play out for so many people, and worked in artefact storage enough to know that they’re true. And she’s not about to use the word haunted, but the Magnus Institute seems like exactly the kind of place an awful, scary experience could happen in.

Then the door bangs open, the one behind them that leads to the rest of the Institute, and they turn with a lot of scared flailing and squeaking to see Jon standing in that doorway, illuminated by the light spilling in from the stairwell.

“What are you all doing over there in the dark?” he frowns.

“Um, you were the one humming, right?” Martin checks, and Jon’s confused affirmation is enough to make Sasha slump with relief. It seems silly now to not have realized that the humming was coming from outside the archives, and that the source was most definitely not some disembodied ghost or monster.

“Power went out,” she explains briefly, and heads carefully over to him, stepping around the stray boxes and papers her eyesight can now make out on the floor. Their office area is just much of a mess as the archive, if not more, and has certainly collected its own fair share of statements.

“Again? This is the third time this week.” Jon sounds extremely disgruntled. Sasha can relate.

“I _know_ ,” she groans. “I wish Gertrude would bring it up with Bouchard already. Or just call the electrical company herself, at this point!”

“I mean,” Martin pipes up, “ _we_ could do that.”

“Do what?”

“Call the electrical company.”

“...Huh,” says Sasha. “Yeah, you’re right.”

The four of them leave the dark archives behind as they walk up the steps to the main floor of the Institute. The rest of the building is still happily well-lit, because the archives are on slightly different wiring or something. Honestly, Sasha doesn’t know why it hasn’t been upgraded to fit with the rest of the Institute, but it frustrates her to no end that they’re the only department with faulty lighting (and faulty heating, and faulty...everything, really.)

“Why didn’t Gertrude come down with you?” Tim asks Jon, who’s leading the way up the stairwell.

“She’s still in artefact storage, got in an argument with Sonja about something and told me to head back. She only brought me along so that I could point out the doll that statement was talking about, but I suppose she must have it covered.”

Sasha shivers at the reminder of the creepy dolls in artefact storage. The doll section, despite 90% of its... _inhabitants_ most likely not being supernatural at all, always made her feel like her skin was crawling. Like they were watching her, picking apart her bones and her secrets. Not that she really has any secrets, but still. It was creepy.

Sonja’s voice is loud enough to be heard through the door to artefact storage. “Have you forgotten about the _four books_ that went missing from our shelves?”  
“I don’t see how that’s relevant,” comes the clipped voice of their boss.

“It’s relevant because they were all from times you asked to ‘have a look around.’”

“She really should have just let me get it,” Jon whispers to the others. “I know she doesn’t want us going in alone, but I can’t remember the last time she _didn’t_ clash with Sonja.”

“It’s stupid,” agrees Tim. “Like, yeah, artefacts are dangerous, but we do know what we’re doing.”

“You guys are too impulsive to be wandering around in storage,” Sasha counters.

“So are you!”

“Yeah, but I worked there for ages, I know how to be cautious.

“I think we know a thing or two about caution!”

“Have you considered the reason she doesn’t let you three go there alone is because of the rocking chair incident?”

“It’s not like the fire was _our_ fault—” Tim is interrupted by the door opening. They must have gotten louder without realizing. Gertrude stares at them, arms crossed, looking very unimpressed. Sonja just looks about ready to tear her hair out.

“What are you four doing?” Gertrude asks them. Sasha hates the tone she’s using. She leaves them to their own devices for the most part, but if they get too close to anything she deems dangerous, she’ll pull out that stupid scolding voice. It always makes Sasha feel like she’s gotten in trouble with a strict parent or grandparent. She tries to stop herself from looking down at her feet self-consciously.

“The power went out,” pipes up Martin. “Again.”

“I showed you where the fuse box is, didn’t I?” says Gertrude impatiently. Behind her, Sonja rolls her eyes, and then grins at Sasha, who smiles back easily. She’s missed working under Sonja; Gertrude isn’t nearly as pleasant, even if Sasha can appreciate her efficiency.

“I’d rather not have to go check the fuse box every single time this happens,” Jon snaps. Sasha represses a sigh; she knows he looks up to Gertrude, but he also clashes with her quite a bit. “And I’m under no impression that it won’t happen again. Why can’t we just get it properly fixed already?”

“I’ve no intention of giving in to Elias’s little game.” Gertrude stalks past them, shoes clicking on the tile floor. Sasha waves good-bye to Sonja before hurrying to catch up. “We’ll simply deal with it until he stops being petty.”

“Sorry, _what?_ ” Martin’s voice is an octave higher than usual. “Are you telling me we’ve had to deal with power outages because of _Elias?_ Does he really have that much of a grudge against you?” Even Sasha is finding it hard to believe the head of the Institute is behind this; she exchanges a bemused look with Jon as they walk.

Gertrude barks out a laugh. “He didn’t cause it, if that’s what you’re implying.” (“That was what _you_ were implying, but whatever,” Jon mutters under his breath, and Sasha stifles a giggle at his annoyance.) “He just refuses to get it properly fixed, and without his help it’ll have to come out of the archives’ budget. Rest assured that I’m putting pressure on him to take care of it within the next week. Is that the only torch you have?” This last question seems to come out of nowhere, and it takes Sasha a moment to register that the others are waiting for her to answer.  
“I think there’s another in the breakroom.”

“No, that’s where I got that one,” says Tim. “And to be honest, I don’t think it’s going to last very long. It probably hasn’t had a battery change since whoever put it there before we started working here.”

“Oh, _that_ one,” Gertrude says, with thinly veiled disgust. They’ve made it back down to the archives, and she pushes open the door and walks through without bothering to hold it open for her assistants, who have to hurry to catch up. “Yes, Emma would have put that there.”

Sasha’s desperately curious to know more about who worked here before Jon, Tim, Martin, and her, but Gertrude never lets slip more than a name or two, so she knows asking further questions would be pointless. Martin looks like he's about to say something, but she shakes her head at him, and he keeps quiet with a begrudging nod.

The lights haven’t magically turned back on in the time they were absent, but Gertrude takes the torch from Sasha and disappears around the corner, presumably to fiddle with the fuse box. Her voice carries back to them—“Unplug that damn heater!”

Sasha knows the drill; she tugs the power cable for the heater out of the wall, and the one for her computer while she’s at it. It takes her a few minutes to find them in the dark. She can hear Tim fumbling his way in the direction of the breakroom, probably to unplug the minifridge and microwave, and Martin swearing as he trips over a stray box of files.

The door opens behind her. She hadn’t realized Jon had followed Gertrude instead of sticking with them, but it’s him that’s standing there, as he says, “You do realize you could have left the door open and had more light?”

“Not like the stairwell is that well-lit,” Sasha says defensively. She really had forgotten about that. She had also forgotten about her phone, she realizes, as Jon lifts up his to cast its weak light in her direction. Hers iss bound to be somewhere on her desk, and she reaches up to grasp for it, her fingers sweeping over multiple stray pens and papers before finally closing around the textured phone case.

Gertrude appears behind Jon, and he hastily steps aside to let her through. Her sigh is short but heavy, and Sasha furrows her eyebrows in apprehension, because that sigh can’t mean anything good.

“As I should hope you can tell, the power is refusing to come back on,” says Gertrude. Sasha frowns; this is the first time it’s been this stubborn.

“So it’s not a blown fuse…?” Martin’s sentence trails off into a hesitant question.

“Could it be the Dark?” Jon asks, voice hushed and wary. Gertrude flashes him a look with severely raised eyebrows.

“The Dark?” she repeats, in a tone that demands elaboration.

“Y-yes, you know…” Jon seems to be losing confidence. “It’s one of the...fear things, right? You’ve mentioned it in your statement notes, and there was—”

“Yes, yes,” Gertrude says irritably. “You four always have more figured out than I expect. But no, I do believe the Dark would be more...intense than this. In any case, I suppose we’ll just have to deal with it.”

Sasha lets out an uncertain noise at this. “Deal with it” sounds an awful lot like Gertrude expects them to continue work in a pitch-black room, something Sasha wouldn’t put past her. Before she ruthlessly makes them all attempt to work at their desks in blindness, Sasha hurriedly says, “I’ll just take my things to the library, then, shall I?”

“Good idea,” agrees Martin, already fumbling for his papers at his desk. Gertrude gives an absentminded hum as she walks across the room to the Head Archivist office, and Sasha decides to take this as an agreement. She slides her computer into her bag as she hears Gertrude close the office door. Which leads to the equally pitch-black office. _Surely_ there’s no light in there; Sasha makes a mental note to add “possible night vision” to the list entitled Spooky Things About Gertrude that Tim had started (it’s a rather short list, but they’ve all contributed at least one item to it).

The four of them flee the archives quickly enough, eager to leave behind the darkness (and Gertrude, if Sasha’a being honest). The light in the stairwell isn’t much better, flickering and dim as usual, so Sasha only feels properly relieved once they’ve reached the main floor level, all bright lights and posh floor tiling and comforting chatter that drifts out from various rooms and offices. The library’s on the other side of the building, and Sasha sets off for it at a quick march, taking the sound of hurried footsteps behind her as a sign that the others are keeping up well enough.

“Oh, hello,” says the person behind the library desk, looking up in a startled sort of way as Sasha, Martin, and Tim bundle their way through the door. Sasha squints at them, trying desperately to remember their name, and “Jayden” pops into her mind suddenly.

“Hi, Jayden,” she says. “Power’s out down there, so we’re working here for the rest of the day, probably.”

“The three of you?” Jayden checks, reaching for the sign-in clipboard, and it’s then that Sasha realizes Jon isn’t with them. She leans back out the door to find that he’s talking animatedly with someone, a ways back down the wide hall.

“Jon, get down here!” she calls in exasperation. He doesn’t turn around.

“I’ll fetch him,” volunteers Tim, but Sasha waves him off and pushes Martin towards Jon instead. Tim is just as easily distracted as Jon and will only end up being drawn into the conversation as well. Sasha can remember multiple occasions where Tim went to grab Jon when he was taking too long to get back to the archives from what should have been a quick trip to the library or Rosie, and she had had to run and get _both_ of them after Tim strayed from his own mission to leave twenty minutes to pass without sign of either them.

“Thank you, Martin. I love them, I really do, but having to wrangle them is something else entirely,” sighs Sasha as he makes his way back with a disgruntled-looking Jon in tow.

“I mean, it’s not like you’re much better, is it?” laughs Martin. “Last week Gertrude asked you to get her a coffee from the breakroom and you ended up on the second floor chatting with Miriam about Keurigs. I had to look _everywhere_ for you.”

Sasha flushes at this. He’s not wrong, although in her defense, she really had just been trying to find someone who knew how to work the coffeepot, and she hadn’t wanted to admit to the others she was struggling with a stupid coffeepot from the 1980’s or whatever, so she had gone to Rosie, who wasn’t at her desk, but there had been some _lovely_ flowers in a vase next to Rosie’s computer, and she couldn’t tell whether they were real or fake but she thought she had seen the same exact ones by the HR offices a couple months ago so up she went to find them and then there was Miriam whose wife was an engineer so maybe she knew something about coffeepots and—

Right. Sasha’s really _not_ much better.

Jayden is watching them all with a bemused expression. “Got everyone?” they ask, eyebrow raised. Martin barks a laugh. Tim frowns. Jon takes in a deep breath as though he’s about to pick a fight. Sasha takes all of this in and immediately drags the three of them away from the front desk and deeper into the library. She leaves Jayden without a response but she’s sure the situation would only have gotten more awkward from there, and if she were Jayden, she’d be grateful she didn’t have to deal with the four archival assistants any further.

They finally distribute themselves across some of the desks that are open to the research students who come in to the Institute fairly frequently. Tim and Jon are across from Martin and Sasha; she shoves the catalogue computer away without much thought and in its place thumps her bag down heavily, upon which Tim immediately sets his feet.

Jon, who’s perched himself atop one of the desks instead of just using the chair, shoves Tim’s legs back to the floor, and Tim topples off his own chair with a thud. Sasha glances back to the front desk to see Jayden staring at them with an expression that’s shifting closer to annoyance by the millisecond; she gives a little smile and wave to reassure them they’ll all behave. Jayden does not look satisfied.

“So who were you talking to, Jon?” Sasha asks, deciding to ignore this.

“It wasn’t David, was it?” Tim says, wrinkling his nose as he settles back into his chair.

Jon glares at him. “No, of course it wasn’t David, I’m not insane.”

“Um...who’s David and what’s the problem with him?” asks Martin cautiously, raising a hand as though he’s in primary school.

“ _Everything_ ,” Tim and Jon say at once, with such venom in their voices that Martin suddenly looks very sorry he’d asked. Sasha just shrugs at him. She doesn’t have any more knowledge than he does; all she’s learned by now is that David is not to be brought up around either of them.

“It was Bethany,” Jon continues. “She’s the one who stopped by last week to ask whether we had any statements on Grey Ladies, remember?” His tone has not lightened up again.

“Oh, the one who—” Tim’s voice drops to what Sasha could only describe as an honest-to-god conspiratory whisper. “Who used to be married to Mark?” Jon nods solemnly.

“Didn’t she accidentally call them ‘Green Ladies’ at first?” Martin remembers.

“ _That’s_ the bitch,” says Jon, and Sasha whacks him with her book bag.

“That’s enough out of the lot of you,” she chastises, as Jon lets out a yelp and falls into Tim, who tries to catch him but is not nearly the right size to do so. They both end up on the floor with Tim’s chair crashing sideways to join them. Sasha pays this no mind, continuing, “Your gossiping is getting out of hand. But what were you even talking to her about, Jon?”

“I was getting to that, you know,” comes a muffled voice from the floor. “Get off me, Timothy, I swear to god.”

Tim pops up first, ruffling his hair back into its usual, more purposeful messiness. “Isn’t that a rather gossipy question, Ms. James?”

“Shut it, Stoker. And no need to comment further, Sims,” she adds, as Jon makes his way back to the top of the desk with an expression that says he would very much like to comment further.

“Yes, ma’am,” says Jon, rolling his eyes. “Anyway, I just thought I’d let her know that she shouldn’t aim to work at prestigious research institutes if she doesn’t even know what she’s researching.”

“Jon!” cries Martin.

“I just think it’s very presumptuous of her to act like a worthy colleague when she can’t even keep track of what color the ghosts are!” bursts out Jon, flushing darkly as his hands wave around in swooping gesticulations.

“Don’t tell me you just went up to her and started chastising her about being a ‘worthy colleague!’” Martin looks like he’s in affronted shock. “That is _so far_ from things that are acceptable to do.”

Sasha would join in on the beratement but she’s too busy cracking up, head in her hands to stifle her laughter. When she can breathe again, she looks up to repeat, “She can’t _even_ keep track—of the—of what _color the ghosts are_!” She immediately breaks down into a fit of wheezing laughter and has to hide her face again.

“I’m very sorry, but I think it might be best if you four find somewhere else to work,” comes a stern voice from behind her, and she quiets down instantly, turning to see Jayden standing there with crossed arms and an expression that’s clearly had to be forced into neutrality. “We try to keep this a space where others can focus, I’m sure you understand.”

“Of course,” squeaks Martin, turning bright red. “We’ll just—um—”

“It’s nearly five anyway, we can probably just head out for the day,” sighs Sasha, having finally gotten herself under control. She waves Jayden off and lugs her bag onto her shoulder yet again. “I don’t think we’re going to be getting much work done in our last ten minutes, do you?”

“Yeah, definitely not,” Tim snorts. “Guess we dragged ourselves here for nothing, though.”

Jayden looks quite vindicated when the four of them make their way past the front desk and out the library door, and Jon nearly gets in a glaring contest with them until Martin grabs his arm and forces him away from what is sure to be an interaction just as heated as whatever the hell happened with Bethany.

Speaking of, the aforementioned redheaded woman is still in the hallway, chatting with someone and clutching a stack of files in one arm and a cup of tea in the other. “Of course she’s slacking off,” mutters Jon, giving her the death glare as they approach. At this, Sasha decides it’s time to change tactics from “clinging to Jon and hoping desperately he doesn’t start a fight” to more active conflict avoidance, and ducks into a side breakroom with the others in tow.

“What are we doing?” says Tim curiously, hopping onto the conference table that takes up half the space in the room.

“Hiding out until Bethany goes away,” replies Sasha grimly.

“Good. Thank you, I appreciate it.”

“I’m not doing this so you don’t have to interact with her, Jon, I’m doing this because I don’t trust you not to make that interaction into something that results with you getting fired for harassment.”

Jon looks suitably chastised at this. Sasha sighs and moves to give him a quick side hug so that he knows she’s not actually upset with him, but he kind of melts into her side (as he’s prone to do; sometimes she could swear he’s secretly a cat turned human by a Leitner or something) and it ends up being quite a lovely hug that is then joined by Tim, because he’ll take any opportunity for hugs that he can get, and Martin, who Sasha knows doesn’t like feeling left out of things. She’s glad of it, because with the three of them around her, she’s filled with such a sense of warmth and safety that it feels like nothing in the world will ever be more of a home to her than wherever they are. 

Even if “where they are” is currently an empty breakroom-turned-hiding-place due to _extremely_ childish reasons.

And then Bethany’s voice, joined presumably by the voice of the person she was just with, drifts down the hall louder than before, and they scramble to get out of sight of the door as she passes right by. Sasha gets a spike of adrenaline and chokes down a giggle as she frantically shoves herself into the far corner of the room. Of course nothing bad would happen from Bethany seeing them, but by the look on Jon’s face and the fact that he’s wedged himself under the coffee counter, he’s realized just how much he should have _not_ said anything to her and is now determined to avoid her at all costs.

Bethany, it seems, is not going anywhere; Sasha can see her back just around the corner of the doorway and hear as she chatters on about her latest knitting project. Why she chose to stop in this part of the hallway Sasha doesn’t know, but it looks like they’re going to be stuck here until she moves on, because Tim and Jon are staring at each other with panicked eyes and Sasha knows there’s no way they’re leaving while she’s out there.

Martin has slid onto the floor with a deep sigh, leaning against the wall and watching Tim and Jon with an expression that’s full of such exasperation that it resonates in Sasha’s soul. She exchanges a look with him that says _We love them but they really are disasters sometimes, aren’t they?_

“How long are we going to be here? I have a train to catch to get home,” Martin whispers.

“Shush, I want to hear what they’re saying,” Tim whispers back fiercely. “The person she’s talking to is _Mark._ ” Martin just rolls his eyes and lets out another pointed sigh.

Two minutes of standing there as Bethany and her conversation partner chit-chat about everything under the sun go by until Sasha starts to seriously wonder how long Tim and Jon are determined to keep them there. “I’m really, really bored,” she says quietly, and only just manages to hold back a groan as Jon shoves his hand over her mouth in a panic.

“Here,” Tim whispers, digging around in his bag until he pulls out a granola bar and hands it to her. She stares at it blankly for a long moment, and then looks back up at him. He shrugs. “It’s Nature Valley.”

The wrapper takes forever to get open without letting it crinkle loudly, and the thing tastes like dust and bitter honey and she’s ninety percent sure it’s from that old box of granola bars they had found in the archives breakroom last week, but she has nothing else to occupy herself with, so she resolutely chews at it and watches as Martin and Jon play rock paper scissors over and over with no clear goal. Eventually her and Tim slide down to join them, and due to some silent mutual decision when Tim questioningly holds out his fingers, a game of sticks starts up. Sasha becomes so engrossed in it that she nearly cries out in frustration when she has to open her last fingers, only to be frantically shushed by the others, although they seem to be just as invested; Martin nearly shoves Tim when he’s double-crossed, which Sasha didn’t even know could _happen_ in a game of sticks, and once everyone but Tim is out another round starts up furiously.

They’re in the middle of their fourth round, poking each other harshly whenever anyone forgets to stay quiet and poking Tim even _more_ harshly every time he gets one of them out after acting like he’s decided to spare them or tries to cheat and give himself more fingers (seriously, who taught him how to be this ruthless at sticks?) when none other than Elias fucking Bouchard walks into the room.

“I do hope I’m not...interrupting anything.”

Sasha startles so hard that she knocks her head against the wall. She has to bite her tongue to stop herself from letting out a curse at the pain, but she bites it too hard and now there’s pain in two different places and the head of the Magnus Institute is watching her with an eerily calm expression and her day has suddenly gotten a lot worse.

“Of course not, sir,” Tim says hurriedly, accompanied by his trademark finger guns. Sasha sees him visibly wince at his realization that that was probably not the best thing he could have done.

“No need for the sir,” says Bouchard with a laugh, his eyes not straying or even blinking. Sasha shifts uncomfortably and glances away from him, to where Martin and Jon are exchanging looks full of all sorts of fun emotions. For a given definition of “fun,” one that includes a lot of panic and overall fear.

“We were just playing some sticks,” Tim continues, and Sasha has never had to fight harder against the urge to facepalm.

“Some...what?” Bouchard asks politely, which makes the conversation worse on so many levels.

“You know, the game where you hold out your fingers and tap other peoples’ fingers and, um.” The hole Tim is digging doesn’t seem to be a very comfortable one, based on his expression, which is gradually devolving further and further into a look of combined terror and insanity. “Anyway, we were just...chilling out.”

“Chilling out,” Bouchard repeats, a faint smile on his face. Sasha mentally prepares herself to be fired.

“We’ll be going now,” Martin jumps in, sudden and far too loud. “Um. Thanks! For...um. That. Wow. I’m sure Gertrude needs us back in the archives for...yeah. So.”

“You’re Gertrude’s assistants, then?” Bouchard’s smile has sharpened, and the way he says it makes Sasha think, for some reason, that he already knew who they were. She’s not sure which will give her a breakdown first, the sheer and all-encompassing awkwardness of the people she’s chosen to associate herself with— _really, Martin?_ —or the way Bouchard is reminding her more and more of a shark that she does _not_ want to test the bite of.

“Mhmm,” she says, standing and gathering her bag, moving slowly as though she’s prey trying not to provoke a predator. The others follow her lead, and they end up in a line facing Bouchard, who seems almost delighted now.

“Well, it _will_ be interesting to see how things play out, won’t it,” he remarks, stepping aside and cordially waving them out of the breakroom. The comment doesn’t leave Sasha unfazed, and the four of them hurry away with no small amount of anxiety.

“Did I just tell our double-boss we were _chilling out_?” Tim says as they make their way towards the front doors, sounding horrified at himself.

“To be fair, Martin also did not handle that well.” Jon says this as though it’s supposed to be a reassurance. Sasha lightly kicks his shin, because it was definitely not.

“I think we’re all at fault here, actually,” she points out, “seeing as it was _all_ of us that somehow got caught up playing _sticks_ on the _floor of a breakroom_.”

“Yeah, Sasha has a point,” says Tim.

“Obviously I do. Bethany was long gone and none of us even noticed.”

“Sticks is a very engaging game,” defends Jon.

“Don’t.”

“Don’t...what?”

“Just don’t.”

He doesn’t.

They’re a meter away from exiting the building when Martin stops suddenly. “Wait, shouldn’t one of us let Gertrude know that we’re clocking out?”

They all stand there for a moment, and Sasha’s not sure about the others, but personally she’s thinking back to the dusty stairwell, and the dark archives, and the pitch-black office that Gertrude is probably still residing in. “No, I don’t think that’s necessary, Martin,” Sasha says, voice a pitch or two higher than usual, trying not to imagine too awfully much about making her way across the cluttered floor and blindly reaching out to knock at Gertrude’s office.

“Well then,” says Tim, clapping his hands together. “We’re all on the same page.” Jon mutters an agreement, Martin is quick to nod, and out of the Institute they go.

“You know,” says Sasha, as they huddle together on the sidewalk, winter wind blowing around them—through them, really, and she’s left her coat in the archives, so it’s not a fun experience—”I think we need to be more professional at work. Let’s work on that, okay?”

“Yes, let’s,” Martin agrees. “I mean, we want to be the best employees we can be, and all...” He trails off at the end until it sounds almost like a question.

“Absolutely,” says Tim, much louder than necessary. “Great. Who needs employee progress reports when we have self-reflection?”

“I think you should do some self-reflection about how you cheat at sticks,” snaps Jon.

Sasha can only sigh as the two of them start to bicker, and herd them in the direction she knows their train station’s in. Martin follows with an interjection here and there, mostly arguing Jon’s side, and when they eventually have to split up and go their separate ways, it’s with the promise that this conversation will pick back up tomorrow.

Sasha feels loneliness settling in as she starts her walk in the opposite direction of Martin, Tim, and Jon; just for a moment, the relative silence is oppressive. But then Tim calls her name loudly, and she turns to see him making a heart with his fingers and grinning at her from across the street, and she grins back and gives him obligatory finger guns, and she could swear she hears Martin’s laugh and Jon’s sigh from meters away. And suddenly, the only thought in her mind is one of how much she loves them.


End file.
